Tauriel of Mirkwood
by LilianxJane
Summary: A talk about Tauriel


she is a horrible character, I wonder why people defend her so much, for real she doesn't deserve it.

the problem with Tauriel's scenes, especially the one in which she and the others are leaving Bard's house. This was a great chance for them to show her interactions with people and give her the development that Boromir got from interacting with Merry and Pippin. It gives her a chance to actually be seen in a different role - so far, the only role we've seen is Kili's Love Interest, and don't tell me she's Captain of the Guard, because we never see her in that role. That was actually a major reason I wanted to see her take charge of leading groups of refugees or something - it would show she was capable of and accustomed to command. But that chance was wasted, and because an opportunity to interact with people other than Kili was right there - to the point where the scene all-but demanded it - her failure to do so makes me think she's doing it on purpose. That she is actively ignoring these other people because they're not Kili and therefore not interesting to her.

And, again, three of these characters are children going through the worst day of their lives.

So that was the first five minutes of the movie, and we're off to a cracking start. Already Tauriel has managed to make me hate her and hate the narrative choices connected to her.

OK, so when I was speculating, I came up with a complex plot taking account of the political situation vis-a-vis Laketown and Mirkwood and Thorin, making use of Tauriel's rank in order to give her a role in forcing the Master to be helpful in allowing access to the windlance and getting help for the refugees.

Well, screw all that noise. Let's have her do nothing.

Tauriel does nothing. She keeps her head down, gets her little boatful of dwarves and children out, and never spares a glance for any of the other people around her. At one point their boat is nearly mown down by the Master's barge, but other than that they might have just been sneaking out of a silent, empty town.

why am I supposed to think Tauriel is any better than the Master? She's also ignoring the people drowning or burning around her. I'm sure she could fit a few more on that boat. I know her boat is loaded with people rather than gold, but given the scene we just came out of, I'm not feeling very charitable. And given what happens next, I'm not even going to give her a moment's benefit of the doubt.

Because this is the point at which they see Bard. He's up on a tower, being brave, shooting at Smaug.

So Tauriel, the brave, compassionate and resourceful Mirkwood warrior, who cares deeply about the world outside her borders and wants to pursue and destroy evil wherever she finds it, tells one of the perfectly able-bodied dwarves to get the others to safety, makes him promise, and then grabs her own bow and runs to help, right? Bain tells her where the Black Arrow is hidden, since we see that he has a line of sight on the right boat (say, it's convenient that despite the frantic rushing around and seeking of escape, nobody has disturbed that boat, isn't it?), and she grabs that too. Then she uses her experience clambering around the trees in Mirkwood to parkour over to Bard, hands him the arrow, assures him his kids are safe, and joins him in kicking ass.

If you think that's what happens next, you've obviously been drinking too much cactus juice.

So Bain - you know, Bard's son, who I suspect is about ten years old - jumps out of the boat and goes running to fetch the Black Arrow. Tilda and Sigrid, understandably, are freaking the hell out. Tauriel says they're going to leave him and paddles on.

Once again , why am I supposed to like this woman? why they say she is strong and selfless? She runs away to save her own hide and that of the person about whom she actually gives a damn, coldly making the decision to abandon a child, potentially to die, without even a backward look or a twinge of regret. She's not the only person who can help Kili, Tilda and Sigrid. She's not facing a situation where if she goes and grabs Bain the others will all die and the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. This is pure chicken-hearted selfishness.

But enough about the opening set piece of the movie. Bain is instrumental in the defeat of Smaug and everything's fine. We cut across to the refugees making their way to shore, many of them soaked and freezing cold because it's winter in a climate in which there's inches-thick ice on the water even in late autumn. and Tauriel and Kili are having a little moment.

Well, I'm glad we've all got our priorities straight. I wish they made her do something like giving blankets to the refuges.

Yeah, this is the same thing as before: polishing off the badly-tied-in subplot with the dwarves in Laketown, but, again, the effect is our heroes just ignoring the suffering people around them in favour of their crappy romance subplot!

So in the final battle, for most of which Tauriel is conspicuous by her absence. This was another disappointment and, I think, the major sign of the change in Tauriel's role. She's not clearly doing anything else; she completely vanishes from the story between Gundabad and her reappearance in Dale. This is a contrast from her role as a great warrior, involved in almost every fight going, in Desolation of Smaug.

So OK, How does Tauriel return to the plot? Well, as Thranduil and his army retreat, his path is blocked by Tauriel. She demands that he return to the battle, since the mortals are already doing badly - especially the dwarves. Thranduil refuses, whereupon Tauriel nocks an arrow, points it at Thranduil's face and threatens to kill him if he doesn't do as she wants.

OK, so let's lay this out in gleeful detail. We've seen throughout this film that Tauriel doesn't really care about anyone but Kili - see my rant on her behaviour in Laketown. She has done nothing helpful this entire time, and appears to have stayed entirely clear of the battle (though, to be fair, she may have only just arrived back; we've not seen anything of Legolas since Gundabad either). However, I cannot assume at this point that her actions come from concern for anyone apart from Kili.

So what that leaves me with is that Tauriel has threatened to kill Thranduil in order to force him to help Kili. Not to do the right thing and stand by his allies, since they're not his allies and Tauriel doesn't care about them, but to help Kili. She's siding with an enemy of her kingdom, against her king.

Once again, I must draw attention to the fact that Tauriel is a ranking military officer. She has presumably served Thranduil faithfully for years, must have sworn oaths of loyalty to him, and he seems very fond of her. In fact, he seems closer to her than to his own son. And she turns on him in a heartbeat for Kili.

And even without her special status, that's high treason. She's committing high treason for a man she's known for a week and spoken to twice.

They've given us an empty shell of a woman motivated entirely by her man, to the point where she will commit serious crimes and betray old friends for him. This is someone I'm meant to like and admire?

I want to talk about Eowyn and Tauriel.

So you remember how I said earlier that Tauriel seems to be going out of her way to not care about anyone but Kili? Don't tell me that's due to time constraints. For most of the time Aragorn is pretty much Eowyn's love interest , but she demonstrates positive relationships with her cousin Theodred, her uncle Theoden, her brother Eomer, Gimli , and Merry. Remember how I said that Tauriel should interact with Sigrid and Tilda? Eowyn cares for two refugee kids who come to Edoras. Tauriel didn't take charge in the stressful situation. Here's Eowyn leading her people to Helm's Deep, and here she is co-ordinating preparations for a siege. Remember how I called for something so simple as a shot of Tauriel giving blankets? Here's the moment I had in mind, of Eowyn with a couple of nameless Rohirrim.

From all those things, we could build up a picture of who Eowyn is apart from a warrior and a woman in love. And she comes across as a much kinder, more compassionate person than Tauriel ever does.

Eowyn disobeyed orders, I will never deny that, but when it came down to it she defended her king almost to her dying breath and she never sided with his enemies. Tauriel outright betrayed her king and threatened to kill him if he didn't help one of his enemies on whom she happened to have a crush on.

And don't tell me about how much she loved Kili.

Thranduil I have to ask what the hell he cares about Tauriel's love life. How does he even know about Tauriel's love life? I'm still not going to call Tauriel a Mary-Sue at this juncture, because at least she's been facing some kind of consequences for her behaviour.

but this really stinks of "The whole of Hogwarts has a betting pool going on whether Gloria-Angelica is going to date Harry or Draco".

I love Thranduil, but I hate what they did to him.

Yeah, about the consequences. She was banished from Mirkwood, forced to permanently leave her home and her friends and her job and everything she's ever known. That's a really serious consequence for running off after Kili in Desolation of Smaug. But it doesn't really work as a consequence because it doesn't affect her at all. I don't recall the least impression that she was upset, or even very shocked. She didn't really seem to care. So it doesn't really work as a consequence.

Also, once again, I can't believe that her motivations are anything other than her beloved Kili when she never seems affected by threats to or loss of anything other than her beloved Kili.

she says,"There is no love in you!" the one who took her under his wings!

Remember what Legolas said,"For six hundred years my father has protected you, favored you. You defied his orders you betrayed his trust."

Correct me if I'm wrong family is another forum of love? feeling remorse for the lost lives and he wants to save the others, isn't this love and care for his kin?

"There is no love in you!" she is an ungrateful coward.

But most immediately, Thranduil destroys her bow because she threatened him, and then lectures her on how stupid she's being. First of all, I once again get the impression that I'm supposed to think he's horribly cruel and unreasonable. I don't. This, for me, is another sign of just how fond Thranduil is of Tauriel. Why? Because one more step forward and he'd have had her head, and that would have been an perfectly reasonable reaction to an assassination threat from a known traitor.

Where the hell do you get off making such an intensely and purposefully hurtful remark just because you didn't get your way? And yes, there is no way that this wasn't purposefully aimed to hurt, because the one thing of any interest whatsoever that happened in the Gundabad scene is that Legolas told Tauriel that his mother died at Gundabad and that his father was so devastated that he won't even allow her to be mentioned. So Tauriel knows there's an excellent chance Thranduil is still in mourning for his wife, and chooses to stab him right where it hurts!

I don't know about anyone else, but I was taught that if you learn a piece of very private, very personal information about a person and then you immediately turn round and use it against that person in order to emotionally hurt and manipulate them, you are a horrible, horrible human being.

So, Kili and co. have been following their own plot up on Ravenhill, and Fili has been killed. Kili, while heading off on his roaring rampage of revenge, sees Tauriel getting the absolute tar beaten out of her by Bolg. Admittedly, I'm not entirely clear on the sequence of events here - I was too busy chewing the scenery in reaction to the senseless murder of Fili - but this was certainly how it ended.

Can I take a moment to remind everyone that Tauriel is a badass warrior, whose sole non-romance characterisation in Desolation of Smaug was that she kicked every ass in battle? Not any more. This is the only time in this entire movie we see Tauriel in combat. The only time. And she spends it being beaten into the ground by Bolg. I think it's only once Kili gets involved that she even makes a sporting attempt to fight back, and then she does terribly at it. I recorded this scene as 'Tauriel forgets how to use weapons', she does so badly. This really is a case of Kili running in to save damsel-in-distress!Tauriel.

Wait for it.

So here comes Kili. He and Tauriel jointly get their asses kicked (It's only because Kili is failing just as hard as Tauriel that I'm not smelling the smell of misogyny, given that comparatively Legolas actually put up a pretty good showing in Desolation of Smaug). Eventually, Bolg succeeds in tying Tauriel to the railroad tracks and is left with just Kili to deal with.

He didn't really, but I like to imagine for the sake of my own sanity that there's a reason she just sat and watched while Bolg very slowly skewered Kili.

So Kili is dead and I'm sure we're all very sad. I'm not, because I'm busy tearing a popcorn bucket to tiny bits, but that's just me. Tauriel is also very sad, which is fine because we'll pretend for the time being that she knows this guy and he is in fact the love of her life. So this gives her the final push she needs to pick up his dropped sword and hunt Bolg down like a dog, finally killing him in tandem to the battle in which Thorin is killing Azog, and it's badass, right?

Do I really need to tell you that that's not what happens?

All Tauriel does is cry her eyes out. Now, again, I'm not unreasonable. I hate this character and I think that this relationship doesn't exist, but I can take the thought for the deed and say that she really did love him with all her heart, he's just been killed in front of her, and she's mourning his loss. I'll give that with both hands, in the same way as I gave Tolkien Arwen's plea to Aragorn that he should stay with her a little longer. She's grieving for the love of her life.

But here's the thing: Arwen then pulled herself together and did what had to be done.

You know who killed Bolg? Legolas did. Tauriel doesn't even get to avenge Kili's death. To all appearances, she spent the next twelve units of time crying over his body while the men took care of her problems for her.

This is pathetic. Completely pathetic. I can't even rage because I just want to spit. I'm supposed to admire and like Tauriel. I don't. She disgusts me. She's supposed to be strong-willed, but as soon as her boyfriend dies she just crumbles. She has demonstrated in Desolation of Smaug that she's a capable warrior. We know she can fight, so why doesn't she? Why does she fail so utterly in combat - and don't tell me it's the loss of her bow; she's demonstrated that she can fight with daggers too - and why doesn't she avenge Kili's death? Why does she crumble?

She did nothing but betray.

Manipulate her friend Legolas and than abandon him.

Never care for her dead kin.

Ignore the people of lake town.

Do not give me the Legolas argument, because simply they butchered him to serve her purpose.

Thank you for reading, share your thoughts about her if you like.

Special thanks to Becca . Spot on.


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